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Friday, March 1, 2013

The best L7 post ever

One of my fave (and I think one of the more underappreciated) bands of the early 1990's were L7, whom referred to themselves as "ugly chick rock"......we can leave that in the eye of the beholder, but they did indeed leave us some pretty good rocking grungy/riot grrrl albums, and also committed some strange antics on stage and the like, a few of which we will touch on later.

For the mot part, the lineup was vocalist/guitarists Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardener, bassist Jennifer Finch, and drummer Dee Plakas. Their self-titled debut is a pre-rgunge (1988) effort, maybe a bit more in the line of something like Red Aunts or Bikini Kill, it's for completists/fans, although it does contain a track entitled "Bite the Wax Tadpole" and if you can tell me the significance of that title, you will win a very, very very special prize compliments of the blog. Well, not REALLY, but it is a funny story, try to look it up somewhere.

Album #2, 1990's "Smell the Magic" is quite a bit more mature, you could hear before our ears the band developing right into it's signature sound.....it's a short, kind of skimpy album, but "Shove" and "Packin' a Rod" are among other good ones......FYI these firt two albums will fit on one single 80- minute CD, in case you needed to know that for any reason.

They hit their stride with "Bricks Are Heavy" in 1992, by far their best work, and one of the best albums of the early 90's, period. "Pretend We're Dead" is a tremendous single, "Wargasm" and the underappreciated "Everglade" are nearly as good, and "Shitlist" appears to great effect in the movie "Natural Born Killers".......great album, do not miss it.

They would not match "Bricks are Heavy".....the next album "Hungry For Stink" had a minor single "Andres", which I personally don't like too much, and some other decent stuff like "Stuck Here Again" and "Riding With a Movie Star", but nothing even close, really, to "Everglade" or "Pretend We're Dead".......L7 fans I'm sure feel this is a fine album, and it has it's moments, but it simply is not "Bricks are Heavy".

In 1997 they released "The Beauty Process Triple Platinum", another deecnt album, argueably better than "Hungry For Stink"....."Drama" and "Off the Wagon" are pretty cool tracks and there are others.....oddly, my copy has a bunch of bonus tracks tacked on the end and NONE of the track listings that I find on the net show them, so I have no idea of this versions country of origin......I mean stuff like The Dead Kennedy's "Let's Lynch the Landlord", The Ramones "Suzy is a Headbanger", several other stuff, culminating with a collaboration with Joan Jett on "Cherry Bomb"

They released a live disc entitled "From Omaha to Osaka" (because those are the two locations that it was recorded in duh), Not bad, not great, I'd have liked to have seen them I heard good things. I also have a 1992 bootleg herem Autralia which I like a bit better and basically focuses on the stuff from "Bricks Are Heavy"

The final link in the L7 chain was 1999's "Slap Happy", it could be worse, there are a few decent tracks like "Freeway" and "Mantra Down", but, clearly, it was time to shut down this operation.......nothing to be ashamed of a fine body of work.

As for their onstage antics, check this very cool Wikipedia piece (I certainly HOPE it is true!):

During their preformance at the 1992 Reading Festival, the band experienced "technical difficulties with their audio equipment" and were forced to stall their set. Quickly, the rowdy crowd grew restless and began throwing mud onto the stage. In protest, lead vocalist Donita Sparks remoed her tampon on-stage and threw it into the crowd yelling "Eat my used tampon fuckers!"Sparks has remained unapologetic about the incident. This has been referred to as one of the "most unsanitary pieces of rock memorabilia in history....You have no idea how much I hope that is true. Also I seem to recall an incident when they "raffled off" a night of passion with one of the band members, I THINK it was Plakas, but I am uncertain on that......there was some time of explanation about rock n roll and prostitution being the same thing anyway or something......anyone else recall that?

Good post here, I like L7.......good music, interesting band. Check em out and let me know what ya think of them.

Zippy has been as up and down as it can be of late.....firt time in a while I've tried a big post, hope that they work with me on this one as they ahve the past couple of small ones. Until tomorrow.....